This is my journal entry from October 24, 2025, part of my daily autobiography Book 5 — Daily Autobiography — my real, unedited days, published in order.
Today marks a major shift in how I create these diaries. From now on, I’m recording the audio versions on the actual day I’m living them, instead of the strange, bloated workflow I’ve been using for the last few months. Until now, I’d been dictating everything into Apple Voice Memos, converting those recordings into transcripts, editing them, dropping them into the book, and then sitting down again later to re-record the whole thing for the audiobook. It’s ridiculous when I think about how much redundancy I built into my own process. It’s almost twice the work of simply dictating straight from the top of my head.
What I actually have—that rare edge—is the ability to speak these entries cleanly, honestly, and coherently without needing to polish them to death. They don’t need heavy editing, at least not in my opinion. I’m sure an agent or a traditional editor might disagree, and some readers probably will too, but the experience feels truest when spoken in the moment. Dictation gives you the rawest, most immediate perspective, and it cuts my workload in half. It also means you’re hearing the day while I’m still in it, not weeks later after I’ve reread and reinterpreted it.
I’m excited to start this new workflow today, even though it also means I’ll need to go back and re-dictate the earlier entries for the book. Fortunately, the backlog isn’t bad. I’m almost finished dictating I Was Famous on the Internet—maybe another hour of work—and I only have two diary books, a little over 100,000 words total, that I originally typed instead of dictated. With this new pace, I should be able to catch up within a week or two, and then I can move full speed into the future.
I’m also committed to dictating my upcoming books straight through from beginning to end. I already did that with Officer Banfield and Speaker Meeting 2017. Some of those didn’t get the best reviews, partly because people expect a polished, edited product, but my mom has a magnet on her fridge that sums up exactly how I feel about all of that. The magnet shows a woman with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and says, “Some people say they don’t like my attitude. I say, fuck them.” That’s exactly how I feel about this whole process. There is no perfect workflow. Nothing I do will make everyone happy. What matters is doing it in a way that keeps me moving and keeps me excited.
I love producing at volume. There have been times when I could have dictated an entire fiction book in a couple of days. Maybe it would have had a few rough edges and maybe it wouldn’t have been perfectly constructed, but the fact is I could have knocked out the whole manuscript in forty-eight hours, taken a couple more days to clean it up, and had a finished print book and audiobook within a week. That’s the pace I want to live at. That’s my talent.
I’m also noticing a shift in where the opportunity is. Print books are great, but the audiobook world feels like a goldmine. There are countless ways to get printed words into the world, but audiobooks are where people spend time. They’re where the momentum is. I listen almost exclusively to audiobooks myself, racing through them at two-and-a-half times speed. It makes perfect sense that listeners are doing the same with mine.
So from here forward, this is how I’m doing things—live, direct, dictated, and honest. This is the workflow that lets me create the most and stay the most myself.
After that new workflow revelation, I went back to the beginning of my day. I keep catching myself saying “also,” “you know,” “um,” and “ah,” sometimes three times in the same sentence. Dictating like this should help me break those habits, and it lets me be funnier than when I’m staring at a polished manuscript. The whole thing has more of a podcast feel, which I like.
I started my morning as usual: drove over, picked up the kids, and took them to school. I read my son the NASA book he had with him—gave him the plain, boring narrator version instead of my usual animated commentary. “NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They did this. They did that.” No jokes about sending shit into space today, just the dry version. After drop-off, I chatted with my ex-wife at the breakfast-nook counter, leaning on the bar with her for a few minutes before heading back home.
Once I got home, I immediately dove into recording I Was Famous on the Internet because I want the audiobook out as soon as possible. I honestly wish I had dictated the entire thing from the start instead of typing it and then trying to recreate the energy afterward. But life works like that—most of the time the best thing you can do is correct the process you’re using now instead of wishing you could redo the past. I dictated a couple more chapters and now have only about an hour left, which feels incredible after months of work. Once that’s done, I’ll go back and dictate Author in St. Petersburg and The Kind Divorce, plus whatever the third book ends up being titled. That means three audiobooks, probably around twenty hours of recording, waiting for me. But I’ll get through it. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Someone at this morning’s AA meeting was wearing a pink elephant shirt, and when the chairperson said that line, I glanced over at him like, “Man, your wardrobe is lining up a little too perfectly with the message today.”
After finishing the morning’s dictation, I headed downtown to meet a friend at a café. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of months since I started massage school, so catching up with her felt wonderful. I handed her a copy of Author in St. Petersburg and gave her the very first proof copy of The Kind Divorce. Giving her that proof copy became my way of telling her I was getting divorced, which definitely surprised her. She offered thoughtful feedback, as she always does.
We talked about what I’m looking for in my next relationship, and I asked her whether I should just hook up and play the field like people keep telling me, or whether I should be honest that I want something serious. I told her, again, exactly what I want: a woman who wants a family, who I find really hot, who is genuinely attracted to me, and who wants to have sex with me a lot. All the same shit I’ve said in plenty of other places. A friend laughed and said she knows plenty of women who match that description and who want those things in their lives too. I told her I figured she would. It was reassuring to hear.
She also said going to the spiritual community is absolutely the right move and that I’ll definitely meet women there. That hit at exactly the right time because tomorrow night is the Halloween dance party at the spiritual community. I’m excited for it. Let’s go.
After matcha with a friend at the café, I paid for both of ours. She had gone to yoga with me afterward at my yoga studio, and that class cost more, so it felt right to cover the drinks. I handed the barista a $20, paid for both matchas, and left a $9 tip. I liked the small bit of attention it got—because I know that kind of thing isn’t the usual.
After catching up with a friend—giving her the books, hearing how she was doing—I told her she should come over sometime so we can work on recording an audiobook for her. The challenge is that most people aren’t professionals the way I am. I can sit down, turn on the mic, and dictate something like this straight through on the first try. God, I wish everyone could do that, because trying to coach someone through dictation can suck. Most people won’t be able to just riff cleanly for hours. They’ll probably need to dictate into a voicemail, get it transcribed, and then read the manuscript for their audio version.
The guy yesterday might have been capable of dictating two hours straight, but then I catch myself asking questions, getting curious, interrupting the flow. We’re getting ahead of ourselves anyway. The priority is helping someone get their first book out. Maybe they don’t need the audiobook right away. And if they do, they’re probably better off reading from a script. But I don’t need that. I can’t be tamed by a manuscript. I get tired of reading something I’ve already written.
After matcha, we drove down to my yoga studio for a yoga instructor’s yoga flow. It felt good to go to a class with someone—I almost never do that except with my ex-wife or the kids. The flow was gentle, and I chatted with a yoga instructor afterward, just a simple, pleasant conversation. What matters is I’m feeling better today. Yesterday I was shitty and sad, and it showed in everything I did. Recording these entries the day they happen will make the diaries more honest. You’ll hear what I’m actually feeling instead of the muted, detached version I get when I come back a month later. Dictating in real time brings back the rawness, the immediacy. And honestly, the humor too.
After yoga, I went home. I woke up early this morning, tired and wanting to drift back to sleep. An older friend told me yesterday that he once took a full year off from both sex and any self-pleasure — twice in his life — and everything still worked fine. When he said that, I was floored. A year? I tend to think about my body the way I think about muscles: if you stop doing push-ups or yoga or strength training, things get lazy. He told me he didn’t notice any issues, that everything still worked like normal.
A year off. Seriously? If I went a whole year without sex or masturbation, I swear my dick might fall off. Legitimately detach and roll away like a lizard tail. The whole conversation was hilarious to me, and moments like that are another reason this audiobook workflow is going to be funnier. Funnier to who? Who knows. It’s just me in a room by myself, so I guess it’s my opinion that matters. Opinions are like assholes—everyone’s got one. That thought was pointless, but it showed up anyway.
When I got home—by “we” I mean a friend went back to her place and I went back to mine—I made a big salad for lunch. And yes, I tossed it. I tossed that salad hard, drenched it in olive oil and tahini, hit it with my spice mix, and resisted the urge to start singing “unusual” again. After eating, I headed out to pick up the kids and started listening to Charlie Sheen’s audiobook, The Book of Sheen. Hearing him ramble so naturally made me want to dictate all my books off the top of my head instead of reading these boring-ass transcripts like I’m doing for I Was Famous on the Internet. It takes way more effort to read my own words than it does to just speak freely. I know I keep looping back to this tangent, but that’s the real truth of it. And if anyone listening is wondering, “Just tell me how many times you jerked off today,” well, this thing might need to be listed as comedy at this rate.
Picking the kids up was a highlight. Some days they barely talk, but today they exploded with conversation. They had all kinds of stories and thoughts to share. At one point, I joked with them that it would be cool if I dated a woman with a big apartment downtown—like one of those $3,000-a-month places—and I could hang out there for free dictating audiobooks while she was at work.
I dropped the kids off, and my ex-wife told me there's a single mom down the street trying to pick up dudes at a bar. My first reaction was “lame,” then “sad,” and then “pathetic,” but I caught myself. She might not know any other way to meet men besides online dating. Maybe she hasn’t heard yet that your boy over here is single. So one of my brilliant plans is to drop one of my books at her house with a little note about what a perfect guy I am to date. Maybe she’ll open it and text me, “Oh my God, I’ve been waiting for this kind of man my whole life.” That’s exactly how she’d say it. I can already hear it. She’s hot too—drives a Tesla. I could see myself with her. I don’t know if she’d want two more kids, but there’s only one good way to find out. Actually, this plan is probably a terrible way to find out. But it’s still one of my current plans. You think this is going to work out for me?
After hanging out with my ex-wife and the kids for about half an hour, I drove to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. One of the guys who’s been showing up every day officially joined the home group, which is great. He chaired the meeting today. The topic was acceptance. My mom told me she went to Al-Anon earlier and their topic was the exact same thing at a completely different time and place. I loved that synchronicity.
During the meeting, I said that a lot of people misunderstand what acceptance actually means. One guy shared, “I’m fucked up, and I just have to accept I’m fucked up.” I jumped in mentally like, No, man, that’s not what we’re doing here. You don’t need to accept that you’re doomed or broken. Maybe you accept that drinking alcohol is unsafe for you—for us—and that picking up a drink is literal insanity. But accepting “I’m fucked up” is just reinforcing a bad program.
I told them to think of themselves like advanced AIs. Everything your body and mind do is a program that was either installed by someone else or installed by you at some point. These programs run automatically, sometimes without conscious input. But you are the operator. You can update the code. You can rewrite the system. When you accept a story like “I’m fucked up, this is just how I am,” you’re locking in a bad belief. You’re not like that. You can change. That’s what a growth mindset is. That was my share.
I shared in the meeting that yes, I absolutely was fucked up when I first came into AA, but I also knew I could change. I was willing to change. I’ve done the work to change. Acting a certain way for years doesn’t mean you’re locked into that identity forever. You don’t have to keep living the same story. I’m grateful that I’m not living how I used to live. I’m living the life I’ve deliberately shaped over the last decade, one I chose on purpose. And even though change is personal, we still need other people to help us learn how to live differently. People taught me how to drink—how to build those habits and patterns—and then people in AA taught me how to be sober. They helped reprogram me, and now I get to be out there helping reprogram others. If someone wants sobriety, they need to learn how to live sober and like it.
There were no women at the meeting again, which was mildly disappointing, but the group we did have—eight guys—made for a great conversation. One man shared that he’s been fighting just to get 50 percent custody of his child, a kid born outside of marriage. Hearing him describe the struggle made me realize how grateful I am for the access I have to my own children. My soon-to-be ex-wife gives me so much freedom to see them whenever I want. I can see them morning, noon, and night almost every day. Today alone, I saw them four different times: waking up, school drop-off, after school, and at bedtime. Hours of time together. Hearing that man share helped me remember not to take that for granted. I’m profoundly grateful my kids are so close and that being part of their daily life is easy.
That gratitude made me choose to stop by my son’s soccer game before heading to tennis. After getting my tennis racquet and shoes ready, I drove over. My ex-wife told me that my daughter had gotten into a fuss with the dogs and she had to intervene, and I felt so grateful in that moment that my ex-wife is the kind of mother I can trust completely—even in the kids’ worst moments. Not every woman is safe when children are melting down. I remember a woman in an AA meeting once saying that she was taking things one day at a time by “not hitting her kids today.” I remember thinking, Damn, that’s awful, and simultaneously respecting the brutal honesty. And also thinking, Please stop hitting those kids. My dad hit me, so I know how those cycles form.
We were standing at soccer when I said something—just a normal comment—and my ex-wife immediately started debating it, which irritated me. I called it out. I told her, “The next woman I’m with is not going to be an attorney.” Attorneys seem to enjoy arguing and debating for sport, and I don’t want that in my relationship. That back-and-forth, point-counterpoint communication style doesn’t work for me. It drains me. I want a woman who listens to the wild, honest shit I say, takes it in, processes it, and then builds something new from it. I don’t want someone who just bats my ideas back and forth like we’re playing tennis. I’m not trying to win an argument. I’m not trying to spar. I want someone who hears me, understands me, and collaborates with me, not someone who wants to keep score.
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had moments where a wave of sadness hits me—sadness that my ex-wife and I aren’t together anymore. Technically, we’re still married, but we’re not having sex, and I’m free to date again, so the part of the relationship I cared about most is gone. What we have now is a friendship, and I’m grateful for that. And we’ll always be family because of the kids. Maybe that should matter more than anything else, but it’s not what I focus on most. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, We should have made it work. She should have been open to an open marriage. Why couldn’t we do better in this way or that way? She spent years saying we weren’t that compatible, and today, walking away from that conversation at soccer, I finally felt it in my bones. I’m glad I’m not going to be married to her anymore. After more than a decade of that communication style, I’m tired of it. It grinds on me. And honestly, that kind of combative communication seems normal with a lot of men too.
I know this is a generalization—and when you generalize, you’re always wrong—so I’m going to generalize even more. Communication with men often feels like a battle over ideas, like two people fencing just to see who gets the point. But communication with women, at least the kind of women I connect with, tends to be different. They absorb what I say, receive it, process it, and then generate something new from it—going in a fresh direction, building off it. That feels exciting and stimulating to me. The woman I started the AA meeting with operates that way. She never fought me on anything. Now, if I asked her boyfriend whether she fights with him, I might hear a different story, but the point stands: there are women who aren’t arguers, women who create rather than counter. That’s the kind of woman I want. Because I hate being argued with. I’m not trying to fight. I’m exploring ideas, thinking out loud. I don’t want a debate breaking out at the soccer field about something I wasn’t even trying to be right about.
Walking away today, it felt good to put a more empowering story on top of the feeling. Instead of leaving irritated or sad, I thought, This is a solid reminder why I’m grateful we’re not staying married. I don’t want to keep having conversations like this for the rest of my life. And I know there are women out there—like a friend, for example—whose communication style flows so differently. A friend doesn’t generally argue directly or counter every point. Now again, I could ask her partner and get a different angle, but my experience with her lines up with the other women I’ve dated. The downside, of course, is that with women who communicate more like that—soft, receptive, generative—I have to be careful not to slide into being overly pushy or controlling. I definitely did that in the past. My college girlfriend had that gentle style, not argumentative or combative at all, and that dynamic could work beautifully for me now.
Back then, though, my ex-wife’s more argumentative energy actually matched me perfectly. Fourteen years ago, I was used to that. I grew up in a family where arguing was the default, where debate was our main love language. I thrived in that dynamic then. But not anymore. Now I want ease. Flow. Conversation without combat. I want to explore ideas, not win or lose them.
So today I felt grateful that I could look at the situation clearly and say, Thank you. Thank you that we’re not staying married. I love her. She’s an excellent co-parent. She’s phenomenal with our kids. But she’s not the woman I want to spend every night with, especially not a woman who wants to debate me at 9:30 p.m. about something I wasn’t even trying to argue about—or challenge me on the sidelines of a soccer field. And part of why she does that, I think, is emotional transferring. She shifts her feelings by challenging me. And that used to work with me. But it doesn’t anymore.
After leaving the soccer field, I drove over to the tennis club for the Halloween tennis social. I was the first one to arrive, and I’m grateful I’ve made some changes in my life that now have me showing up early instead of late. It feels good. For years, I was the guy arriving five or ten minutes behind schedule, constantly rushing because my life was stuffed too full—especially when I was glued to everything online. All that digital chaos trained me to overpack every minute of my day. Now that I’m off that shit, I’m naturally landing places early. Tonight, I showed up more than ten minutes ahead of time. Wow, Jerry, holy shit. More than ten minutes early. What a try-hard. I got there around 5:48 p.m. for a 6:00 p.m. event. Whether we’re rounding or being exact, that’s when I arrived. They didn’t even have things set up yet, so I wandered around, went to the bathroom, and came back.
A couple from the club showed up next, which made me happy, and eventually twelve of us arrived—four kids and eight adults, perfectly balanced: four men and four women. The tennis director, the new director of tennis, ran the whole thing by himself because none of the other coaches came. He did an amazing job, running multiple courts with different games and keeping everything moving. I loved the doubles rotations. And it was especially cool to see a family I recognized—the couple whose daughter was in VPK with my daughter. Their daughter, a girl from the club, used to be so affectionate and enthusiastic with me back then, always running up for big hugs. I was a little sad she didn’t remember my name initially, but tonight she said she did remember my face and remembered me, just not my name. That still felt good. It’s nice to be remembered at all. Their whole family plays tennis, and seeing them again brought back warm memories from when we were also tennis club members years ago.
A girl from the club is incredible at tennis. She’s my daughter’s age—ten or eleven—and she actually beat me in both points I played against her. I was genuinely happy just to hit with her. We played a game called Wipeout, where each rally starts as singles, and every time someone loses a point, the other side adds a player. It builds up until one side has six players, and if that side with six wins the point, they earn a point for their team and everything resets. After that, we had a little one-point tournament where everyone played 1v1, single-point elimination. An eleven- or twelve-year-old kid beat me, and I was so butthurt about it. I genuinely believed I was going to win and get a shot at playing against a girl from the club or her parents or one of the other kids. I rushed the net too early, he passed me clean, and I instantly regretted not staying at the baseline where I could have reacted either way. After that, the bracket played out beautifully. A girl from the club beat her dad, and the final championship match—out of all twelve players—came down to her versus her mom. They had a long rally, and then her mom charged in and smashed a winner to end it. Everyone loved that as the final moment of the evening.
Afterward, I hit with a girl from the club’s dad, her mom, and another guy for a while before heading home to say goodnight to the kids. My son asked if taking tennis lessons would make him good enough to beat a girl from the club. I told him no—she’s had six years of lessons, and he’s three or four years younger. Even if they both kept taking lessons, he probably wouldn’t have a real chance of beating her until he was around sixteen, when his physical strength and size would really kick in. Maybe then he’d stand a chance.
I love watching what the kids get interested in and how they look at the world. Being around them lets me feel that youthful, kid-like energy in myself too. During the social, the tennis director cracked a joke as we were playing a camp-style game the kids already knew but most adults didn’t. He said, “Adults, I want you to go out there and have fun too.” A simple reminder, but a good one. I go to tennis to have fun first. Not to measure how good I am or get frustrated—just to enjoy myself and get some exercise. That’s why I play singles: it’s fun, and it gets me sweating. Everyone always wants to play doubles with me, but doubles barely gets me moving. I want to be running, drenched, and spent after a match. A three-set match, ideally. Though—let’s be real—it’s usually two sets because I often lose both. I also scheduled a tennis coaching appointment with a new coach at the club. We’re going to keep the lessons going.
Oh, finally, he’s running out of shit to say. Thank God. It is 10:15 p.m., and I am ready for bed. I hadn’t decided whether I want to rub one out before sleeping; I figure I’ll know soon enough. Yeah, that’s disgusting. After tennis and saying goodnight to the kids, I ate a couple of LÄRABARs for dinner and drove over to see my mom for about thirty minutes. I thanked her for cheering me up the night before. I’d felt so sad and shitty, and she helped lift me out of it. What I love is that she doesn’t try to fix my mood—she doesn’t lecture or diagnose or spin through solutions. She just talks to me and loves me in that simple, uncomplicated way that only a mom can, and feeling that love steadies me. I told her how grateful I was: I’d been in the shitter emotionally, and she helped me come back to sanity. I woke up feeling restored today, and that felt amazing.
I also managed to jot down my dreams in my dream journal, though I’m not sure I need to launch every diary entry with dream analysis. I’ll talk about them when they make sense. Last night’s were… something. Oh god damn it, I thought we were going to get away without hearing his dreams. But here we are. I had one dream where we were riding on a train and a house was being cut down as we passed. Then suddenly my ex-wife and I were on a trip together with the kids. In the dream, I felt this overwhelming sense of This is all I need. This is perfect. But I also felt horrible, because in the dream I’d been unfaithful to her. Then things shifted into something out of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. These little bug-like creatures were crawling from people’s hands up their arms and into their brains. Yeah, that’s gross. Thanks for that. You’re welcome.
I woke up trying to decode what the hell that symbolism meant. The psychic told me my guides communicate best with me when I’m asleep. And I’m thinking, Why don’t these motherfuckers send an email while I’m sleeping? Could you make it a little clearer? Because sometimes I’m not getting it. I wake up like, What the fuck was that? What message were you trying to send with bugs crawling into people’s skulls while some lady demolishes a house from a moving train? The part about my ex-wife made some emotional sense, but the rest? Still no idea.
And then that beautiful moment arrived—when I genuinely started to run out of things to say.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.